ENGLISH  AND  THE 

Dr.  S.  P. 

There  is  a  popular  rumor  abroad, 
[which  threatens  to  become  an  article 
of  faith,  to  the  effect  that  the  only 
persons  seriously  concerned  for  the 
future  of  Latin  studies  are  the  teach¬ 
ers  of  Latin  and  certain  amiable  old 
gentlemen  who  received  their  educa¬ 
tion  before  Darwin  announced  the 
Origin  of  Species.  The  prosperity  of 
this  rumor  is  partly  to  be  explained 
by  the  fact  that  the  believers  in  Latin 
have  too  persistently  stood  upon  the 
defensive ;  so  that  to  the  eyes  of  an  in- 
discriminating  and  not  over-interested 
public  they  have  appeared  always  to 
be  fighting  for  their  own  altars  and 
their  own  fires.  They  have  demanded 
on  the  one  hand,  a  unique  place  in  the 
curriculum  on  the  ground  that  Latin 
literature  possesses  a  unique  and  im¬ 
mediate  humanizing  value.  On  the 
oth^r  hand,  they  have  stood  upon  the 
preeminent  virtue  of  Latin  as  a  formal 
intellectual  discipline.  The  objection 
to  entire  dependence  upon  these  two 
positions  is  that  they  are  exposed  to 
constant  and  violent  assault;  though 
they  may  be  impregnable,  they  are  by 
no  means  indisputable.  As  an  agent 
of  culture,  Latin  has  been  obliged  to 
struggle  for  a  foothold  with  jealous 
rivals  ranging  from  economic  history 
to  nature-study  and  wood-carving.  As 

*A  paper  read  at  the  Illinois  Hig-h  School 


LATIN  QUESTION* 

Sherman 

an  agent  of  discipline,  it  has  been  hard 
pressed  by  physics  and  mathematics. 
And  now  comes  the  psychologist  edu¬ 
cator,  and  offers  to  cut  that  ground 
from  underfoot  by  denying  assent  to 
the  “dogma  of  formal  discipline.” 

It  is  possible  at  the  present  hour 
that  the  Capitoline  Hill  may  best  be 
defended  by  leaving  it,  and  by  join¬ 
ing  forces  with  the  allies  outside  the 
city;  I  mean,  by  ceasing  for  a  time  to 
insist  upon  the  independent  value  of 
Latin,  and  by  concentrating  attention 
upon  its  value  in  relation  to  other  stud¬ 
ies — particularly  English.  The  strate¬ 
gic  advantage  of  the  shift  would  rise 
from  the  fact  that  English  is  now  very 
strongly  intrenched  in  both  second¬ 
ary  and  college  education.  Further¬ 
more,  we  are  all — more  or  less  delib¬ 
erately — students  of  English;  we  all 
recognize  the  value  of  accurately  ex¬ 
presing  our  ideas  and  of  exactly  un¬ 
derstanding  the  ideas  of  others.  Now, 
though  the  notion  has  never  dawned 
upon  that  large,  good-humored,  unen¬ 
lightened  public  opinion  which  indi¬ 
rectly  shapes  our  educational  policies, 
to  the  serious  student  of  English  some 
acquaintance  with  Latin  is  not  merely 
convenient,  not  merely  valuable,  but 
quite  literally  indispensable.  At  every 
onward  step  toward  the  mastery  of 
Conference,  Nov.  24,  1911. 


REPRINTED  FROM  SCHOOE  AND  HOME  EDUCATION  FOR  APRII,  1912. 


2 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


his  own  language  and  literature  he 
must  use  his  Latin  lamp  if  he  has  one, 
or  stumble  and  go  astray  in  the  dark¬ 
ness  if  he  has  not.  In  this  position 
the  value  of  Latin  is  unique.  To  pro¬ 
pose  the  equivalence  of  economic  his¬ 
tory  or  nature-study  or  wood-carving 
or  physics  or  mathematics  is  sheer  im¬ 
pertinence.  The  reasons  why  this  is 
so,  impressively  impinge  upon  one’s 
consciousness  only  after  one  has  been 
dealing  for  some  time  with  students 
of  English  who  have  no  Latin.  I 
speak  not  as  a  Roman  citizen  but  as 
a  provincial  ally,  who  sees  that  the 
safety  and  perpetuity  of  our  provincial 
institutions  is  bound  up  with  security 
of  Rome. 

II. 

We  grant  Latin  readily  enough  to 
grammarians  and  lexicographers,  but 
are  rather  reluctant  to  admit  that  it  is 
a  key  which  should  be  in  the  hands 
of  every  one  who  has  occasion  to  open 
an  English  dictionary.  Yet  we  know 
that  the  invasion  of  Latin  words  into 
English  speech  began  nearly  2,000 
years  ago,  and  has  continued  with  un¬ 
abated  vigor  ever  since.  It  has  been 
estimated  by  competent  investigators 
that  one  fourth  of  the  Latin  vocabu¬ 
lary  has  passed  into  English.1 *  Of 
these  Latin  words  a  very  large  num¬ 
ber  have  come  in  without  change  of 


form,  and  some  of  them  still  retain 
their  original  inflections.  We  must 
give  our  students  an  inkling  of  Latin 
grammar  before  we  can  expect  them 
to  employ  correctly  such  common 
forms  as  data,  strata,  and  the  like. 
Besides  this  group,  we  have  an  im¬ 
mense  host  of  naturalized  foreigners 
derived  directly  from  the  Latin  and 
indirectly  through  the  Romance  lan¬ 
guages,  In  the  Bible  and  Shakespeare 
only  60  per  cent  of  the  vocabulary  is 
of  native  stock;  in  the  poetry  of  Mil- 
ton,  only  33  per  cent.3  The  great 
bulk  of  the  remainder  is  of  Latin  ori¬ 
gin.  The  technical  language  of  phil¬ 
osophy,  theology,  law,  and  the  sciences 
— constantly  growing  and  constantly 
overflowing  into  the  language  of  every¬ 
day  life  —  is  mainly  Latin.  In  the 
time  of  Chaucer,  French  and  Latin 
were  rival  forces  in  the  introduction 
of  new  elements  into  our  speech,  but 
since  the  Renaissance  far  the  greater 
number  of  the  new  coins  have  come 
from  the  Roman  treasury.  In  one 
sense,  then,  Latin  is  even  less  a  dead 
language  than  English.  It  is  the  ele¬ 
ment  in  our  composite  vocabularly 
which  has  shown,  as  compared  with 
Anglo-Saxon,  the  more  abundant  pow¬ 
ers  of  growth  and  reproduction.  It  is 
almost  as  fairly  to  be  called  our  father 
as  English  is  to  be  called  our  mother 
tongue. 


l-  Greenough  and  Kittredge,  Words  and  their  Ways  in  English  Speech ,  1901;  seep.  106. 

*•  Marsh,  Lectures  on  the  English  Language,  Ed.  4;  See  p  123. 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


3 


But  why  attack  this  Latin  element 
in  English  by  way  of  the  Latin  gram¬ 
mar  and  the  Latin  lexicon?  How 
specifically  does  the  study  of  Latin 
facilitate  the  use  of  Latin  words  which 
have  become  English?  Well,  three  or 
four  years  of  Latin  will  acquaint  the 
student  with  the  original  force  of  most 
*  of  the  prefixes  and  suffixes,  and  so 
guard  him  from  sqme  of  the  common¬ 
est  improprieties,  and  even,  if  he  has 
any  instinct  for  these  things,  assist 
him  materially  in  the  art  and  mystery 
of  English  spelling.  Furthermore, 
his  possession  of  merely  the  simplest 
and  most  limited  Latin  vocabulary 
will  give  him  a  great  advantage  over 
a  student  without  Latin  in  approach¬ 
ing  the  apparently  formidable  Eng¬ 
lish  polysyllables.  To  the  man  without 
Latin  our  sesquipedalian  abstracts  re¬ 
main  impenetrably  abstract;  to  the 
man  with  Latin  they  disintegrate  into 
their  physical  elements.  To  the  one, 
words  like  fratricide  and  matricide , 
for  examples,  look  strange,  learned, 
and  difficult.  To  the  other,  who  has 
met  frater,  mater ,  and  caedere  in  the 
Latin  lexicon,  fratricide  looks  easy  and 
familiar — just  as  Bradermord  looks 
easy  and  familiar  to  a  German.  A 
modest  grasp  of  Latin,  then,  does  in¬ 
deed  unlock  the  difficult  words  in  Eng¬ 
lish.  And  it  helps  not  merely  in  ac¬ 
quiring  them  but  also  in  retaining  them 
and  in  employing  them  with  assurance 
and  accuracy.  This  is  no  negligible 

*Krapp,  Modern  English ,  1909:  See  p.  282 


consideration;  nothing  so  obstinately 
balks  the  progress  of  our  English  stu¬ 
dents  in  reading  and  in  writing  as  the 
short  tether  at  the  end  of  which  they 
rotate  around  the  English  dictionary. 

It  is  often  urged  that  the  meaning 
of  English  words  of  Latin  derivation 
has  so  changed  that  a  knowledge  of 
the  roots  is  practically  valueless — that 
the  meanings  may  better  be  learned 
directly  from  English  usage.  This  is  * 
a  particularly  pernicious  error.  In 
this  fashion  our  lighter-hearted  jour¬ 
nalists  acquire  their  mother  tongue. 
This  is  the  easy  and  rapid  method  for 
the  corruption  of  speech — the  means 
by  which  all  fineness  of  shading  and 
nicety  of  application  are  lost.  This 
is  why  we  find  students  and  journal¬ 
ists  saying  aggravate  for  irritate,  stu¬ 
pendous  for  immense,  amazing  for  re¬ 
markable,  splendid  for  delicious,  redo¬ 
lent  for  full  of,  supine  for  prone,  ar¬ 
dent  for  energetic,  optimistic  for  ami¬ 
able  ^  etc. — indefinitely.  Coleridge  de¬ 
clared  that  the  first  thing  to  consider 
in  the  choice  of  a  word  is  its  root ;  and 
he  was  right.  No  writer  or  speaker 
who  ignores  the  roots  of  Latin  deriva¬ 
tives  is  secure  from  egregious  error. 
Some  years  ago  the  post  office  depart¬ 
ment,  for  example,  sent  out  directions 
that  all  letters  of  a  certain  class 
should  be  endorsed  on  the  face  of  the 
envelope.*  The  physical  image  buried 
in  these  words  is  galvanized 
into  an  awkward  activity  by 


P 


4 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


the  grasp  of  an  unskillful  hand.  Just 
as  truly,  there  is  a  sleeping  beauty 
in  them  ready  to  waken  at  the  touch 
of  the  prince  of  style.  But  there  is 
no  prince  of  style  in  English  who  has 
not  given  days  and  nights  to  the  study 
of  Latin;  and  I  do  not  believe  there 
ever  will  be.  It  is  a  condition  imposed 
upon  us  by  the  wealth  of  our  word- 
hoard.  It  is  a  burden  and  a  privilege 
committed  to  us  by  innumerable  an¬ 
cestors,  which  we  must  sustain  under 
peril  of  forfeiting  our  inheritance. 

III. 

When  we  pass  from  the  considera¬ 
tion  of  vocabulary  and  style  to  the 
consideration  of  English  literature  in 
general,  the  necessity  of  Latin  becomes 
even  more  obvious.  Merely  in  pass¬ 
ing,  it  may  be  recalled  that  for  nearly 
a  thousand  years  Englishmen  wrote 
in  Latin  a  very  large  body  of  their 
history,  their  philosophy,  their  relig¬ 
ious  and  their  political  thought.  Every 
one  knows  that  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
and  mediaeval  periods  Latin-trained 
monks  and  churchmen  were  the  Eng¬ 
lish  scholars,  and  that  the  works  which 
they  thought  worth  preserving  were 
mainly  addressed  to  the  Latin-reading 
world  in  the  language  qf  that  world. 
It  is  not  so  generally  remembered  how 
far  down  toward  our  own  day  poets 
and  prose  writers  continued  to  some 
extent  the  serious  use  of  Latin  in  orig¬ 
inal  composition.  It  is  a  good  peni¬ 


tential  exercise  for  a  modernist  to  run 
over  from  time  to  time  some  of  these 
names:  in  Anglo-Saxon  times,  Bede 
for  church  history,  Anselm  for  the¬ 
ology  and  philosophy;  in  the  twelfth 
century,  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  for  the 
origins  of  Arthurian  romance, — and  a 
whole  troop  of  Latin  chroniclers ;  Rog¬ 
er  Bacon  for  philosophy  in  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century;  Matthew  Paris  for 
history;  John  Gower  for  poetry  in  the 
age  of  Chaucer,  Wycliff’s  earlier  writ¬ 
ings  for  divinity;  in  the  sixteenth  cen¬ 
tury,  More’s  “Utopia,”  and  poetry  like 
that  of  the  great  Scotch  humanist, 
George  Buchanan,  and  Shakespeare’s 
contemporary  Thomas  Campion;  in 
the  seventeenth,  the  more  serious  scien¬ 
tific  work  of  Lord  Bacon,  a  flood  of 
occasional  verse,  some  of  the  prose 
and  poetry  of  Milton,  poetical,  politi¬ 
cal,  and  philosophical  works  of  Hob¬ 
bes;  and  so  it  continues  down  toward 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
the  Latin  poems  of  Vincent  Bourne 
and  Thomas  Gray.  It  does  not  con¬ 
cern  the  “man  in  the  street”  or  even 
the  ordinary  student  to  read  this  mat¬ 
ter  in  Latin  or,  indeed,  to  read  most 
of  it  at  all.  It  does  concern  the  schol¬ 
ar  frequently.  And  in  it  are  some  of 
the  most  interesting  and  the  darkest 
spots  of  our  literary  history. 

Yet  let  the  intrinsic  value  of  this 
great  body  of  Anglo-Latin  literature 
be  rated  as  low  as  one  pleases,  there 
it  lies  behind  us  like  a  sunken  Roman 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


5 


wall  stretching  from  our  immediate 
past  across  the  wide  tract  of  the  mid¬ 
dle  ages  to  the  uttermost  borders  and 
beginnings  of  English  thought  —  an 
imperishable  reminder  of  our  intimate 
and  age-long  alliance  with  that  elder 
culture  and  speech,  under  the  shadow 
and  protection  of  which  (  our  own 
speech  and  culture  have  developed.  To> 
itemize  our  indebtedness  to  that  great 
alliance  is  impossible.  It  is  equally 
impossible,  moreover,  to  exaggerate  it. 
Though  our  English  authors  have  now 
at  last  ceased  to  entrust  to  Latin  any 
ideas  which  they  wish  the  world  to 
consider,  every  great  English  writer 
of  prose  or  poetry  from  the  time  of 
King  Alfred  to  the  time  of  Alfred 
Tennyson  has — almost  without  excep¬ 
tion — been  schooled  in  the  Latin  lan¬ 
guage,  has  known  well  some  of  the 
Latin  masterpieces,  and,  consciously 
or  not,  willingly  or  not,  has  written 
under  the  influence,  sometimes  indis¬ 
tinct,  sometimes  overmastering,  of  the 
Latin  models. 

King  Alfred  tells  us  that  upon  a 
time  he  fell  awondering  why  in  the 
good  old  days  when  Latin  learning 
flourished  in  England  none  of  the 
scholars  had  bethought  themselves  of 
turning  anything  into  their  own  lan¬ 
guage.  “But  straightway,”  says  the 
old  king,  “I  answered  my  thought  in 
this  wise :  They  did  not  conceive  that 
men  were  ever  to  become  so  careless; 
that  learning  was  ever  so  to  decline !” 


In  the  dearth  of  the  higher  educa¬ 
tion,  however,  the  king  hastens  to  give 
his  people  the  second-best,  an  English 
translation  of  the  “Pastoral  Care/’  dis¬ 
creetly  following  the  Latin — “just  as 
I  learned  it  from  Plegmund  my  arch¬ 
bishop,  and  from  Asser  my  bishop, 
and  from  Grimbold  my  mass-priest, 
and  from  John  my  mass-priest.”  And 
so,  following  the  humility  of  this  well- 
disciplined  sovereign,  all  the  Middle 
Ages  sit  at  the  feet  of  ancient  Rome, 
great  schoolmistress  of  the  mediaeval 
world.  For  Chaucer  and  his  contem¬ 
poraries,  with  all  their  freshness  of 
observation,  literary  composition  still 
consists  in  great  measure  in  retelling 
classical  story,  in  retailing  classical 
thought.  In  the  Renaissance,  transla¬ 
tion  and  imitation  receive  new  impetus 
from  closer  contact  with  the  best  mod¬ 
els;  and  a  whole  generation  of  writers 
tries  to  classicize  English  thought,  and 
style,  and  vocabulary,  and  even  Eng¬ 
lish  prosody.  In  the  seventeenth  cen¬ 
tury,  religious  poets  are  still  plunder¬ 
ing  Ovid  to  express  their  love  for  God 
and  the  Virgin,  and  a  prose  writer  so 
late  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  declares 
that  “if  elegancy  still  proceedeth,  and 
English  pens  maintain  that  stream  we 
have  of  late  observed  to  flow  from 
many,  we  shall  within  a  few  years  be 
fain  to  learn  Latin  to  understand  Eng¬ 
lish,  and  a  work  will  prove  of  equal 
facility  in  either.”1  Just  as  the  sonor¬ 
ous  and  golden  prose  of  men  like 


Cited  in  the  historical  introduction  to  the  International  Dictionary ,  p.  xxxiv.  (1901). 


6 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  Browne, 
and  Jeremy  Taylor  betrays  the  potent 
spell  of  Cicero  and  the  Roman  elo¬ 
quence,  so  typical  eighteenth  century 
poetry  acknowledges  the  sway  of  Hor¬ 
ace;  and  his  odes,  epistles,  and  Ars 
Poetica  are  edited,  translated,  parod¬ 
ied,  and  imitated  by  hundreds — per¬ 
haps  by  thousands.  In  the  nineteenth 
century  the  influence  of  Latin  models 
becomes  possibly  more  diffuse  but 
scarcely  less  persistent.  Cardinal  New¬ 
man,  whom  we  recognize  as  a  genuine 
representative  of  classical  English  in 
an  age  when  Carlylese  flourishes,  has 
undergone  the  discipline  of  all  the  Ro¬ 
man  prose  masters,  and  can  dis-‘ 
course  learnedly  of  their  several  quali¬ 
ties.  Tennyson  professes  himself  a 
lover  of  Virgil  since  his  days  began, 
echoes  ever  and  anon  the  “Lydian 
laughter”  of  Catullus,  or  tunes  his 
graver  harp  to  the  solemn  music  of 
Lucretius.  The  stylist  Stevenson 
studies  Tacitus  and  reads  his 
Livy  amid  the  tempest  of  the  South 
Pacific  Sea.  Nor  does  the  story  end 
there.  I  have  heard  of  an  editor  who 
chastens  his  style  for  the  morning’s 
editorial  by  an  hour  before  breakfast 
with  a  Roman  historian.  Eugene 
Field  adapts  Horace  to  the  meridian 
of  Chicago.  In  a  recent  article  we 
ffiear  of  Mark  Twain’s  well-thumbed 
copy  of  Suetonius,  which  he  read  till 
his  very  last  day;  on  page  492,  “there 
is  a  reference  to  ‘Flavius  Clemens,  a 


man  of  wide  repute  for  his  want  of 
enebgy,’  opposite  which  Mark  Twain 
writes  in  the  margin — ‘I  guess  this  is 
where  our  line  starts.’  ”  Mark  Twain’s 
strong  common  sense  does  not  fail  him, 
where  many  professional  educators 
stumble.  Our  line  does  start  there,  or 
thereabouts ! 

Inevitably,  therefore,  the  study  of 
the  origin  and  development  of  literary 
forms  in  English  leads  us  back  to  Lat¬ 
in.  The  English  drama  struggling 
out  of  the  Middle  Ages  remains  crude 
and  half-articulate  till  it  is  reenforced 
and  inspired  by  contact  with  Seneca 
and  Terence  and  Plautus.  Formal 
English  satire  arises  when  Joseph  Hall 
and  John  Marston  apprentice  them¬ 
selves  to  Juvenal  and  Martial  and 
Persius,  The  investigator  of  the 
sources  of  English  prose  fiction  cannot 
neglect  Petronius  and  Apuleius.  Ba¬ 
con,  the  essayist,  points  a  significant 
finger  over  the  head  of  Montaigne  to 
the  Roman  moralists.  As  soon  as 
one  begins  to  consider  Spenser’s 
eclogues,  if  not  before,  one  must  be¬ 
gin  to  consider  Virgil.  Elizabethan, 
Jacobean,  and  Caraline  epigrammatic, 
lyric,  and  elegiac  verse  perfects  itself 
in  emulation  of  Ovid  and  Horace,  of 
Catullus  and  Propertius  and  Tibullus. 
Ben  Jonson’s  critical  theories  develop 
and  crystallize  under  the  influence  of 
Quintilian  and  Horace.  English  epic 
attains  speech  and  form  divine  in 
“Paradise  Lost”  only  after  a  great 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


7 


classical  scholar  has  spent  a  life  time 
in  intimate  companionship  with  Virgil 
and  Homer.  English  epistolography 
is  indebted  to  Cicero’s  correspondence 
with  Atticus,  and  so  late  as  the  eight¬ 
eenth  century  we  find  an  English 
s  slave-trader,  later  to  be  known  as  the 
eminent  divine  John  Newton,  enditing 
love  letters  to  his  wife  from  the  west 
coast  of  Africa  under  the  inspiration 
of  Pliny.  Even  the  masters  of  pulpit 
eloquence,  those  who  developed  the 
English  sermon,  learn  many  of  their 
arts  under  pagan  Roman  rhetoricians. 
And  Burke,  the  most  philosophical  of 
English  orators,  and  one  of  the  no¬ 
blest  of  English  statesmen,  acknowl¬ 
edges  that  he  has  formed  his  character 
on  the  model  of  Cicero. 

IV. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  situation 
— of  these  facts  of  literary  history — 
the  student  of  English  literature  is 
continually  confronted  with  definite 
and  important  problems  to  the  under¬ 
standing  of  the  terms  of  which  ac¬ 
quaintance  with  Latin  is  absolutely 
^  prerequisite.  Let  us  set  down  a  few 
of  these  problems  in  rather  concrete 
form  by  way  of  illustration: 

i.  In  the  sixteenth  century  English 
stylists  are  divided  into  two  groups : 
the  vernacular  party  and  the  classical 
party — a  division  which  continues  well 
into  the  seventeenth  century.  What 
are  the  specific  issues?  Unless  the 


student  can  recognize  for  .himself  the 
difference  not  merely  between  words 
of  Anglo-Saxon  and  words  of  Latin 
origin  but  also  the  difference  between, 
say,  the  style  of  Cicero  and  the  style 
of  John  Bunyan,  he  cannot  proceed 
one  step  beyond  the  naked  assertion 
of  text-book  or  teacher.  Without  Lat¬ 
in,  and  Latin  in  the  original,  he  can¬ 
not  realize  the  issues. 

2.  In  the  same  period  began  a  long 
controversy  about  rhymed  and  rhyme- 
less  verse,  and  about  the  quantitative 
and  accentual  verse  systems.  Unless 
the  student  has  at  least  scanned  his 
Virgil,  it  is  vain  labor  to  present  the 
matter  to  him. 

3.  Shakespeare,  let  us  say,  repre¬ 
sents  romantic  comedy;  Jonson  con¬ 
sciously  opposes  him  with  classical 
comedy.  What  is  the  essential  nature 
of  the  opposition  ?  If  your  student 
knows  not  at  least  a  play  or  two  of 
Terence  or  Plautus,  he  cannot  feel  the 
significance  of  Jonson’s  appeal  to  the 
authority  of  the  ancients.  Pie  must 
remain  in  the  dark  concerning  the  con¬ 
flicting  dramatic  movements  after  1600 
— concerning  the  force  of  that  pro¬ 
found  impulse  which  in  the  end  pro¬ 
duced  Restoration  comedy. 

4.  Even  elementary  text-books  speak 
of  the  classical  school  of  seventeenth 
century  lyric  poets.  Why  “classical?” 
If  your  student  has  never  read  an 
Horatian  ode,  an  epigram  of  Catullus, 
an  elegy  of  Tibullus,  if  he  cannot  catch 


8 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


the  echoes  of  these  elder  singers,  per¬ 
ceive  the  likeness  of  spirit  and  form 
in  the  songs  of  Ben  and  his  “sons,” 
in  Herrick  and  Carew  and  Suckling — 
this  distinction  becomes  pedantic  sound 
and  fury  signifying  nothing. 

5.  The  age  of  Anne  is  commonly 
^called  the  Age  of  Classicism.  Schol¬ 
ars  who  know  their  Greek  and  Latin 
classics  prefer  to  call  it  the  age  of 
pseudo-classicism.  Once  more,  why 
“pseudo  1”/  Obviously  it  is  of  the 
highest  importance  to  clear  thinking 
to  be  able  to  compare,  if  only  on  a 
small  scale,  the  literatures  on  which 
that  distinction  is  based. 

If  we  are  unable  to  deal  with  such 
problems  as  these,  we  must  abandon 
all  pretensions  to  critical  study;  we 
cannot  claim  for  the  study  of  English 
any  high  seriousness  or  philosophical 
depth.  If  we  neglect  these  problems, 
we  neglect  everything  that  gives  dis¬ 
tinctive  features  and  character  to  the 
face  of  English  literature.  We  can¬ 
not  pass  over  the  Latin  element,  and 
attend  to  the  native  element  alone;  be¬ 
cause,  to  all  mtents  and  purposes,  the 
native  element  never  is  alone.  Eng¬ 
lish  literature  is  not  composed  of  a 
bundle  of  independent  parallel  forces; 
it  is  the  resultant  of  forces  uniting  at 
many  points  and  from  many  angles. 
What  makes  it  distinctive  is  not  this 
or  that  stream  but  the  confluence  of 
many  streams  of  influence  —  to 
which  Latin  is  almost  always 


a  heavy  contributor.  English  poe¬ 
try  in  particular  is  a  Euphorion 
uniting  the  richest  and  most  varied 
ancestral  strains — the  novel  and  unex¬ 
pected  offspring  of  an  Anglo-Saxon 
mother  by  a  Latin  father  descended 
from  a  Greek,  cradled  by  a  Celtic  god¬ 
mother,  nursed  by  a  French  aunt,  edu¬ 
cated  by  an  Italian  governor,  and  con¬ 
verted  by  a  Hebrew  prophet.  When 
an  English  poet  is  writing  as  nearly 
as  possible  in  a  pure  native  tradition, 
he  gives  us  something  like  the  “Battle 
of  Maldon.”  When  Christian  religious 
culture  is  united  to  his  native  serious¬ 
ness  he  gives  us  the  “Piers  Plowman.” 
But  when  the  whole  mediaeval  stream 
with  its  freight  of  Greek  and  Roman 
stories,  popular  superstitions,  Celtic 
folk-lore,  French  chivalry,  and  the  rest 
sweeps  into  the  classical  stream  of  the 
Renaissance,  then  first  our  English 
poet  can  give  us  the  Elizabethan  lyric, 
the  “Fairy  Queen,”  and  the  “Midsum¬ 
mer  Night’s  Dream.”  Consider  for  a 
moment  how  the  ends  of  the  earth  meet 
and  all  times  melt  together  in  this  ex¬ 
change  of  views  between  Shakespeare’s 
Titania  and  his  Oberon.: 

Titania:  I  know 

When  thou  hast  stolen  away  from  fairy-land 
And  in  the  shape  of  Corin  sat  all  day, 
Playing  on  pipes  of  corn  and  versing  love 
To  amorous  Phillida.  Why  art  thou  here, 

But  that,  forsooth,  the  bouncing  Amazon, 
Your  buskin’d  mistress  and  your  warrior  love, 
To  Theseus  must  be  wedded,  and  you  come 
To  give  their  bed  joy  and  prosperity. 
Oberon:  How  canst  thou  thus  for  shame, 
Titania, 

Glance  at  my  credit  with  Hippolyta, 

Knowing  I  know  thy  love  to  Theseus? 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


9 


Didst  thou  not  lead  him  through  the  glim¬ 
mering  night 

From  Perigenia,  whom  he  ravished? 

And  make  him  with  fair  Aegle  break  his 
faith. 

With  Ariadne  and  Antiopa? 

This  is  not  Greek  nor  Latin  nor 
Celtic  nor  Saxon;  it  is  the  full  blown 
flower  of  English  poetry.  But  you 
cannot  inhale  its  bewildering  frag¬ 
rance  unless  you  can  remember  in  one 
divine  confusion  the  enchanted  fields 
of  fairyland  and  the  wide  wilderness 
of  classical  mythology.  Is  it  not  a 
shame  to  cast  such  pearls  before  stud¬ 
ents  who  have  never  read  Ovid? 

But  the  remorseless  modernist  roam¬ 
ing  up  and  down  the  jungles  of  edu¬ 
cational  theory  does  not  hesitate  to 
declare  that  we  have  outgrown  Shake¬ 
speare  as  we  have  outgrown  Latin. 
There  is  this  shadow  of  a  dismal  truth 
in  what  he  says:  In  proportion  as  we 
forget  and  ignore  the  Latin  classics 
we  shall  find  all  our  great  elder  writers 
growing  obsolete  and  inaccessible.  To 
the  modernist  this  peril  brings  no  dis¬ 
may.  “Who  reads  Shakespeare,  any¬ 
way?”  he  cries  cheerily.  “Let  our 
boys  and  girls  have  a  poet  of  their  own 
time,  interested  in  the  ideas  and  emo¬ 
tions  that  interest  them.  Let  them 
read  Tennyson!”  Of  course,  we  can¬ 
not  retreat  from  Latin  by  that  avenue. 
Nor  can  we  leave  Latin  behind,  and 
read  with  real  intelligence  any  import¬ 
ant  English  poet.  For  all  great  poe¬ 
try,  like  the  lost  face  of  Leonardo’s 
Monna  Lisa,  is  haunted  and  subtleized 


by  memories,  fixed  or  fleeting,  of  old 
unhappy  far-off  things  and  battles  long 
ago.  It  is  a  hall  echoing  the  voices 
of  forgotten  singers,  and  tremulous 
with  the  lights  and  shadows  of  all  the 
ages.  It  is  but  the  magical  arch 
through  which  we  peer  into  time’s 
dark  backward  and  abysm;  if  we  are 
not  seeing  through  and  beyond  it,  we 
are  not  seeing  it  aik-  all.  “Why  have 
people  ceased  to  care  for  poetry?” 
runs  the  tedious  refrain.  Because — 
if  the  question  is  a  fair  one — they 
have  ceased  to  understand  it.  Because 
they  cannot  rise  to  the  level  on  which 
poetry  has  its  being.  They  have  ceased 
to  understand  it,  because,  having  neg¬ 
lected  the  ancient  classics,  they  have 
lost  their  share  in  the  common  stock 
of  traditional  thoughts,  images,  and 
feelings  in  which  formerly  every  edu¬ 
cated  man  participated.  Reading  Eng¬ 
lish  poetry,  therefore,  no  more  can 
yield  them  its  legitimate  pleasure  and 
reward  by  uniting  them  with  the  im¬ 
passioned  history  of  human  experience 
which  it  is  the  special  function  of 
great  poetry  to  preserve. 

For  the  sake  of  the  modernist,  let 
me  illustrate  what  I  mean  with  the  aid 
of  a  few  lines  from  the  “Passing  of 
Arthur” — the  five  quiet  lines  closing  the 
Idyls  of  the  King.  After  the  body  of 
the  dying  Arthur,  borne  in  the  en¬ 
chanted  barg'e  with  the  three  queens 
of  faerie,  had  drifted  out  to  sea,  Sir 
Bedivere,  last  of  the  knights,  climbed 


10 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


the  crag  by  the  wintry  mere,  hoping 
to  catch  one  more  glimpse  of  his  sov¬ 
ereign.  When  he  had  reached  the 
highest  point,  straining  his  eyes  Sir 
Bevidere  saw,  says  Tennyson, 

Or  thought  he  saw,  the  speck  that  bare  the 
king 

Down  that  long  water  opening  on  the  deep 
Somewhere  far  off,  pass  on  and  on,  and  go 
From  less  to  less  and  vanish  into  light. 

And  the  new  sun  rose  bringing  the  new  year. 

Now,  what  was  Tennyson  thinking 
and  feeling  when  he  wrote  that  final 
line — And  the  new  sun  rose  bringing 
the  new  year f  Out  of  what  deeps  of 
memory  and  experience  do  those  sim¬ 
ple  words  rise  into  consciousness,  and 
break  on  the  shores  of  light — digs  in 
luminis  orasf  What  is  the  effect  of 
that  line  upon  the  duly  prepared  read¬ 
er?  What  did  Tennyson — classical 
scholar,  like  all  our  English  poets — 
have  a  right  to  expect  it  to  do?  Well, 
he  had  a  right  to  expect  that  it  would 
link  itself  subtly  but  instantaneously 
with  the  close  of  the  second  book  of 
the  Aeneid — 

Iamque  iugis  summae  surgebat  Lucifer  Idae 
ducebatque  diem,  Danaique  obsessa  tenebant 
limina  portarum,  nec  spes  opis  ulla  dabatur: 
cessi  et  sublato  montes  genitore  petivi. 

He  had  a  right  to  expect  that  his  echo 
of  this  Virgilian  music  would  trans¬ 
port  us  for  a  moment  to  the  ridges  of 
Mt.  Ida  after  the  desolation  of  the 
Royal  city  of  Priam;  that  with  ex¬ 
panded  vision  and  sympathies  we 
should  enter  into  the  solemn  reflections 
of  Aeneas  looking  before  and  after — 
backward,  over  the  burning  towers  of 


Ilium  and  the  pomp  of  Homeric  times 
into  the  world’s  pale  unhistoric  morn¬ 
ing — forward,  down  the  long  imper¬ 
ial  vista  of  Roman  history  melting  in¬ 
sensibly  into  the  Dark  Ages ;  that  there 
we  should  stand  on  another  ridge  with 
another  hero,  mythical  and  symbolical 
like  the  first — behind  us,  the  dim  Ar¬ 
thurian  realm  receding  vaguely  into 
the  glimmering  Celtic  twilight — before 
us,  the  distant  and  confused  roar  of 
the  “drums  and  tramplings  of  three 
conquests,”  the  far  .reaches  of  Eng¬ 
lish  history  widening  gradually  and 
brightening  down  to  our  own  little 
span  of  light  and  time;  that,  standing 
here  with  these  tidal  memories  stream¬ 
ing  through  us,  we,  too,  should  feel 
ourselves  to  be  but  myths  and  sym¬ 
bols,  momentary  links  between  the 
shadowy  past  and  the  new  day;  and 
that  so  we,  too,  should  become  shar¬ 
ers  and  communicants  in  the  world’s 
melancholy — the  lacrimae  rerum ,  and 
the  world’s  hope — “the  prophetic  soul 
of  the  wide  world  dreaming  of  things 
to  come.” 

Thi$,  I  say,  or  something  like  this, 
happens  to  the  reader  who  is  sufficient¬ 
ly  versed  in  the  rudiments  of  general 
culture  to  be  prepared  to  understand 
and  enjoy  English  poetry.  What  hap¬ 
pens  to  the  reader  who  is  not  so  pre¬ 
pared,  I  cannot  say;  I  suppose  noth¬ 
ing  in  particular  happens.  Till  a 
fairly  recent  date  it  has  hardly  been 
necessary  to  raise  the  question.  For 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


11 


it  may  be  said  without  much  exagger¬ 
ation  that,  till  recent  years,  no  one  set¬ 
ting  up  for  an  educated  man  would 
have  admitted  without  humiliation 
that  this  passage  failed  to  recall  for 
him  the  “glory  that  was  Greece,  the 
grandeur  that  was  Rome.”  Reflect, 
for  example,  on  the  significance  of  this 
bit  of  advice  from  Lord  Chesterfield, 
that  shrewd  man  of  the  world,  to  his 
son  on  the  study  of  the  classics :  “Pray 
mind  your  Greek  particularly;  for 
to  know  Greek  very  well  is  to 
be  really  learned :  there  is  no 
great  credit  in  knowing  Latin, 
for  everybody  knows  it;  and  it  is 
only  a  shame  not  to  know  it”  On 
this  point  Samuel  Johnson,  who  was 
notoriously  not  a  lover  of  the  earl, 
was  wholly  in  accord  with  him.  While 
the  Doctor  and  his  biographer  were 
travelling  one  day  by  sculler  to  Green¬ 
wich,  Boswell  inquired  whether  “he 
really  thought  a  knowledge  of  Greek 
and  Latin  an  essential  requisite  to  a 
good  education.”  To  which  Johnson 
promptly  replied :  “Most  certainly, 
Sir;  for  those  who  know  them  have  a 
very  great  advantage  over  those  who 
do  not.  Nay,  Sir,  it  is  wonderful  what 
a  difference  learning  makes  upon  peo¬ 
ple  even  in  the  common  intercourse  of 
life,  which  does  not  appear  to  be  much 
connected  with  it.”  For  the  sake  of 
argument,  Boswell  continued  to  urge 
that  people  can  get  through  the  world 
and  carry  on  their  business  success-, 


fully  without  learning.  Johnson  con¬ 
ceded  that  in  some  cases  this  might 
be  true — “for  instance,  this  boy  rows 
us  as  well  without  learning,  as  if  he 
could  sing  the  song  of  Orpheus  to 
the  Argonauts,  who  were  the  first  sail¬ 
ors,”  He  then  called  to  the  boy,  says 
Boswell,  “What  would  you  give,  my 
lad,  to  know  about  the  Argonauts?” 
and  the  boy  answered,  “Sir,  I  would 
give  what  I  have” — a  reply  which  was 
rewarded  with  a  double  fare  as  an  in¬ 
dication  that  the  lad’s  sense  for  “edu¬ 
cational  values”  was  correct!  If  John¬ 
son  and  Chesterfield  should  visit  our 
universities  today,  what  would  be  their 
comment  on  the  position  which  Greek 
and  Latin  hold  in  the  curriculum? 
Doubtless  they  would  marvel  together 
on  the  multiplication  of  businesses, 
other  than  sculling,  which  may  be 
prosecuted  successfully  “without  learn¬ 
ing.”  Perhaps  also  they  would  agree 
once  more,  and  declare  that  it  is  eas¬ 
ier  now  to  pass  for  an  educated  man 
than  it  ever  was  before  in  the  world. 

V. 

I  am  confident  that  such  would  be 
their  verdict,  if  they  considered  the 
results  of  a  little  experiment  which  I 
have  recently  made  upon  some  400  uni¬ 
versity  freshmen  and  sophomores  chos¬ 
en  at  random  from  the  colleges  of  lib¬ 
eral  arts,  law,  engineering,  and  agri¬ 
culture.  '  For  the  purposes  of  this  pa¬ 
per  the  results  of  this  experiment  may 


12 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


be  summarized  briefly  in  the  form  of 
“laws”  as  follows: 

A.  A  student’s  power  over  the  Eng¬ 
lish  dictionary  varies  directly  with  the 
number  of  years  in  which  he  has  stud¬ 
ied  Latin. 

B.  A  student’s  acquaintance  with  the 
commonplaces  of  classical  allusion  var¬ 
ies  directly  with  the  number  of  years 
in  which  he  has  studied  Latin. 

C.  A  student’s  ability  to  read  a  page 
of  Shakespeare  varies  directly  with  the 
number  of  years  in  which  he  has  stud¬ 
ied  Latin. 

Though  I  shall  proceed  to  show 
from  what  data  these  conclusions  were 
drawn,  these  “laws”  are  not  to  be  read 
with  too  solemn  a  face;  regard  them, 
if  you  please,  as  convictions  of  the 
author  supported  by  a  certain  amount 
of  general  observation  and  specific  evi¬ 
dence. 

(i)  For  the  test  on  vocabulary  I 
made  a  list  of  sixteen  words  of  Latin 
derivation,  as  follows :  temporizing, 
subservient,  concatenation,  concomi¬ 
tant,  decorum,  exculpation,  latent,  mit¬ 
igate,  extenuate,  plenipotentiary,  ret¬ 
rospective,  taciturnity,  matricide, 
dormitory,  incarnation,  mortification. 
(This  is  not  a  harder  list  than  that 
recently  employed  for  testing  jurymen 
in  Chicago.)  I  gave  this  list  to  216 
students,  and  asked  them  to  define  the 
words  in  a  simple  way, — if  possible, 
with  reference  to  the  meanings  of  their 
roots.  When  I  had  graded  the  papers, 


I  arranged  them  in  five  groups :  writ¬ 
ers  in  the  first  group  had  studied  no 
Latin;  in  the  second  group,  one  year; 
in  the  third,  two  years;  in  the  fourth, 
three  years;  in  the  fifth,  four  years. 
Those  who  had  studied  Latin  four 
years  reached  an  average  grade  of  40 
per  cent;  three  years,  35  per  cent;  two 
years,  29  per  cent;  one  year,  23  per 
cent;  no  Latin,  20  per  cent.  That  is, 
those  who  had  four  years  of  Latin 
were  twice  as  efficient  as  those  who 
had  none;  and  the  difference  between 
one  and  none  was  practically  negligi¬ 
ble. 

The  blunders  were  both  numerous 
and  suggestive.  They  revealed  with 
remarkable  plainness  the  nature  of  the 
disastrous  psychological  accidents  that 
occur  to  those  who  pick  up  the  mean¬ 
ings  of  words  from  the  context,  and 
do  not  examine  the  roots.  The  most 
instructive  illustrations  are  afforded 
by  the  various  definitions  or  synonyms 
for  incarnation.  A  foreign  student  re- 
jpicing  in  the  Christian  name  of  a 
Greek  dramatist  defines  incarnation 
as,  “the  way  J.  C.  was  born  from  the 
Virgin  Mary” — the  context  is  obvious. 
A  second  writes,  “referring  to  animals 
after  death” — evidently  a  confusion 
with  reincarnation.  A  third,  “filled 
with  badness” — perhaps  suggested  by 
some  such  phrase  as  “the  incarnation 
of  evil.”  A  fourth,  “fierce,  horrible” 
— apparently  related  to  “a  fiend  in¬ 
carnate,”  or  “an  incarnate  devil.”  A 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


13 


fifth,  “bloodshed” — associated  with 
“carnage.”  A  sixth,  “the  occasion  on 
which  a  king  is  crowned” — “corna- 
tion.”  A  seventh,  “the  name  of  a  cer¬ 
tain  occasion”  (sic) — “cornation”  as 
before,  but  foggier.  Four  of  these 
students  had  studied  Latin  two  years; 
three  of  them,  not  at  all.  A  little  timely 
etymologizing  in  a  Latin  course  would 
have  saved  them  from  several  kinds  of 
error.  As  it  is,  they  will  probably  go 
forth  into  the  world  and  poison  the 
wells  of  English  till  they  die. 

(2)  To  this  same  group  of  216  stu¬ 
dents  I  gave  a  list  of  names  familiar 
in  Roman  history,  poetry,  and  myth¬ 
ology,  and  asked  for  brief  identifica¬ 
tions:  Plautus,  Aeneas,  Vulcan,  Hor¬ 
ace,  Diana,  Hector,  Mercury,  Cicero. 
Virgil.  I  asked  also  for  the  approxi¬ 
mate  dates  of  Caesar,  Hannibal,  and 
Virgil;  for  comment  on  the  propriety 
of  certain  words  of  Latin  derivation 
in  English  sentences — e.  g.,  “The  air 
of  spring  is  redolent  with  the  song  of 
birds ;”  and  for  the  analysis  of  an  Eng¬ 
lish  sentence.  Taking  the  paper  as  a 
whole,  including  the  test  on  vocabu¬ 
lary,  I  obtained  the  following  results : 


Years  of 

Latin  Study. 

Grade. 

Number 
of  Papers. 

4 

48% 

21 

3 

39% 

29 

2 

33% 

45 

1 

24% 

29 

0 

24% 

To  take  a  single  instance  of  a  classi¬ 
cal  author,  154  out  of  216  students  had 
no  idea  whatever  concerning  Horace; 
here  are  a  few  specimen  guesses:  “a 
Greek  historian,”  “a  fictional  Greek,” 
“a  Greek  god,”  “a  Greek  orator,”  “a 
character  of  mythology.”  That  is  val¬ 
uable  information.  It  means  that  to 
a  large  majority  of  the  miscellaneous 
students  in  elementary  English 
courses,  it  is  mere  jargon  to  mention, 
say,  “the  Horatian  ideal”;  it  means 
that  I  may  as  well  speak  of  the  jab- 
berwockian  attitude  toward  life  as  to 
speak  of  the  Horatian  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century ;  it  means  that  I  am 
merely  adding  one  confusion  to  an¬ 
other  when  I  try  to  explain  the  move¬ 
ment  of  seventeenth  century  poetry  by 
reference  to  the  classical  influence.  The 
distribution  of  those  who  had  heard 
of  Horace  in  my  five  groups  was  as 
follows  :  four  years,  62%  ;  three  years, 
41%;  two  years,  31%;  one  year, 
25%  ;  no  Latin,  17%. 

Of  the  92  students  who  had  no 
Latin,  one  third,  approximately,  had 
heard  of  Diana.  One  thirteenth,  or 
seven  in  all,  could  identify  Aeneas. 
Of  Cicero,  I  learn  that  he  was  “a 
Greek  philosopher,”  “a  Greek  general,” 
“a  great  Grecian  poet,”  “the  greatest 
Grecian  poet”  —  a  character  which 
would  .certainly  have  been  grateful  to 
Cicero!  Hector  is  described  as  “a 
Grecian  princess  who  was  stolen  by 
the  Troy  prince,  thus  causing  the  war.” 


14 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


Dido  was  “queen  or  king  and  went  to 
Africa,”  Aeneas  was  a  protean  crea¬ 
ture — “the  lover  of  Virgil — lived  1000 
B.  C.,”  “one  of  the  goddesses  in  favor 
of  the  Trojans,”  “god  of  the  winds,” 
“goddess  of  the  hearth.”  Caesar,  it  ap¬ 
pears,  lived  “500  A.  BA;  the  writer 
has  studied  no  Latin,  but  knows  at 
least  the  value  of  an  academic  A.  B. 
A  sophomore  student  of  agriculture  1 
without  Latin  writes  :  “Caesar  lived 
1200  B.  C. ;  Hanibal,  still  earlier;  Vir¬ 
gil,  no  idea.”  This  man,  to  whom  a 
thousand  years  are  as  yesterday,  can 
define  no  one  of  my  sixteen  English 
words.  He  knows  none  of  the  histor¬ 
ical  or  mythological  names.  At  the 
foot  of  his  paper  he  adds  this  post¬ 
script:  “If  I  had  time,  I  should  like 
to  study  Latin,  a  knowledge  of  it  would 
be  very  handy  in  the  sciences,  but  since 
it  is  of  no  practical  value  I  do  not  see 
why  it  is  studied  by  so  many  students.” 
When  I  meet  this  student,  I  shall  reas- I 
sure  him  on  this  last  point — -the  num¬ 
bers  are  not  large  enough  to  occasion 
any  great  apprehension. 

But  what  is  the  effect  of  this  agri¬ 
cultural  attitude  toward  Latin  upon 
the  student  of  English  literature?  Sim¬ 
ply  this :  when  you  set  him  down  be¬ 
fore  the  “Fairy  Queen”  or  “Paradise 
Lost,”  he  discovers,  or  you  discover, 
that  he  is  unable  to  study  English. 
Language,  images,  allusions,  form — 
all  is  as  Hebrew  to  him.  He  must  be¬ 
gin,  as  Spenser  and  Milton  began,  by 


studying  Latin — but  at  a  long  remove 
from  the  proper  sources  of  informa¬ 
tion.  He  cannot  be  reasoned  with  in 
his  state  of  innocence  about  the  spe¬ 
cial  qualities  of  the  versification,  the 
literary  sources  or  affinities  of  the 
poem,  its  representative  character,  its 
rich  and  magical  suggestiveness  and 
beauty.  He  cannot  pluck  the  fruit  of 
the  tree  without  climbing  the  trunk. 
Pie  must  now  at  last  open  the  pages 
of  some  “Who’s  Who?”  in  classical 
mythology — breathlessly  inquire  who 
Hector  was?  who  Helen?  who  Dido? 
who  Aeneas? — cast  a  hurried  glance 
at  Olympus,  scrape  a  momentary  and 
undignified  acquaintance  with  Jove — 
and  rush  into  class  with  the  news. 

But  that  is  not  studying  English, 
though,  alas,  it  passes  under  that  name 
in  too  many  of  our  class  rooms.  It 
is  not  even  tasting  English.  It  is 
merely  making  a  futile  attempt  to  con¬ 
ceal  one’s  ignorance  of  the  classics.. 
For  when  a  boy  comes  to  the  “Fairy 
Queen”  or  to  a  play  of  Shakespeare 
or  to  “Paradise  Lost,”  all  these  things 
should  lie  in  his  mind  as  rich  and  splen¬ 
did  reminiscences.  This  post  haste 
culture  of  the  eleventh  hour  is,  more¬ 
over,  generally  valueless.  At  the  end 
of  the  year,  all  that  this  boy  will  know 
of  the  gods  of  the  elder  world  could 
be  engraved  in  full  on  an  English  pen¬ 
ny. 

(3)  I  support  this  assertion  in  part 
by  the  results  of  the  second  half  of 


ENGLISH  AND  THE  LATIN  QUESTION. 


15 


my  investigation.  I  had  a  page  of  the 
“Merchant  of  Venice”  typewritten  and 
distributed  to  198  students.  It  was 
the  exquisite  passage  between  Jessica 
and  Lorenzo  in  the  first  scene  of  the 
fifth  act,  beginning: 

The  moon  shines  bright.  In  such  a  night  as 
this, 

When  the  sweet  wind  did  gently  kiss  the  trees 
And  they  did  make  no  noise — in  such  a  night 
Troilus  methinks  mounted  the  Troyan  walls 
And  sigh’d  his  soul  toward  the  Grecian  tents 
Where  Cressi.d  lay  that  night. 

So  it  runs  on,  Jessica  and  Lorenzo  cap¬ 
ping  reminiscences,  and  living  over 
again  under  the  moonlight  the  passion¬ 
ate  moments  of  vanished  lovers — Dido 
and  Aeneas,  Pyramus  and  Thisbe, 
Medea  and  Jason,  The  tritest  eternal 
commonplaces!  —  household  words, 
familiar  in  our  mouths  as  the  names 
of  Washington  and  Lincoln.  I  asked 
each  student  to  name  the  author,  the 
dates  of  his  birth  and  death,  and  the 
play  from  which  the  lines  were  taken; 
to  describe  the  meter;  to  explain  the 
allusions;  and  to  comment  on  the  lit¬ 
erary  quality  of  the  selection.  Some¬ 
what  to  my  surprise  a  very  large  per 
cent  placed'  the  passage,  named  the 
author,  dated  him,  and  described  the 
metre  correctly.  But  only  a  very  few 
of  those  who  had  studied  Latin  less 


than  three  or  four  years  could  explain 
any  of  the  allusions.  And  only  those 
who  could  explain  the  allusio,ns  could 
say  anything  at  all  about  the  literary 
quality.  The  scale  of  percentages  for 
my  five  groups  ran  on  this  test  par¬ 
allel  with  that  on  the  first : 


Years  of 

Number 

Latin  Study. 

Grade. 

of  Papers. 

4 

40% 

38 

3 

30% 

34 

2 

24  °/o 

43 

1 

1 7% 

42 

0 

17% 

4i 

The  17% 

earned  by 

the  last  two 

groups  represents  mere  memory  work 
applied  to  dates,  verse-form,  etc.,  and 
indicates  no  understanding  or  appre¬ 
ciation  of  the  poetry,  whatever.  'So 
far  as  my  figures  have  any  value,  they 
tend  to  show  that  a  man  may  as  well 
try  to  reach  England  without  a  boat 
as  to  attain  proficiency  in  English 
without  Latin.  This  conclusion  is  in 
general  confirmed  by  my  daily  experi¬ 
ence  in  the  classroom.  If  other  teach¬ 
ers  of  English  do  not  assent,  then  we 
probably  differ  as  to  the  “values” 
which  should  be  realized  in  the  study 
of  English. 


3  0112  062264665 


